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rallamajoopSo, people seemed to like the idea of seeing a little more Diet/Tower politics? Well, you should be rather in luck with this part, although 'politics' may not be precisely the word for it...
Other parts so far: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11
On a journey like this one, the biggest issue was inevitably going to be transport. Fuel was always in short supply, and they’d be traversing dangerous country. There’d be no opportunity to refuel along the way, and certainly no way to carry as much as they’d need for the whole journey.
The Tower’s solution was admirably low tech. The vehicle which they sent to Kurogane’s camp – designated the neutral start point for the journey – was best described as a refined version of an old-fashioned horse and cart arrangement. Pulling it was a team of deadlands beasts – a variety Doumeki had often seen in great herds in the wild. They were low built and long-necked, some strange mix of bird and mammal by appearance, barely domesticated, but tame enough in their handler’s care. It wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, but even with the loaded cart they could keep up a steady trop all day, and the only fuel they needed was the poison grass that covered the deadlands soil.
The handler who came with them was a young girl who cheerfully introduced herself to Doumeki and the Diet Building’s team as Nekoi Yuzuriha. Along with the cart team she was also accompanied by a tame deadlands wolf – larger than any breed that had existed back Before – which she called Inuki, and doted on with obvious affection. Doumeki had never met her before but had known her slightly be reputation nonetheless. Despite her age, she was known for having a way with the deadlands animals unsurpassed across the country.
Accompanying her was a rather more sombre young woman a few years her senior who introduced herself as Kishu Arashi. In contrast to Yuzuriha’s bubbly cheer, Arashi was quiet and serious, aloof in a manner that had little to do with ego and everything to do with heavy responsibility assumed without resentment from a young age. Doumeki never once saw her handle a visible weapon, yet she carried herself as if well armed at all times.
The vehicle sent by the Diet Building bore little resemblance to the Tower’s, being built something like a well-loaded tank. Information about just what fuelled or propelled it was never volunteered, and neither Doumeki nor the Tower team ever bothered to ask. At any rate, it kept pace with the cart without difficulty as the miles went past.
The team that came with it consisted of two men, both some years older than the girls the Tower had sent. One by the name of Kusanagi Shiyu appeared to have been selected to provide most of the muscle, for he arrived well armed and carried his gun with him with the familiarity of someone used to treating it like an extra limb. He was heavily built to go with it, but despite what should have made for a daunting appearance, he quickly turned out to be as open an amicable as anyone could have asked. His companion, Kigai Yuuto, was scarcely less friendly at face value, but he kept something more of a careful distance between himself and whoever he might have been engaging with. It was not difficult to surmise that if Kusanagi was to provide the muscle, Yuuto had been chosen to deal with negotiations; nor was it difficult for Doumeki to imagine this was the sort of man who would always listen and think twice as much as he spoke.
Altogether, even with Doumeki and everyone sent by both the larger groups, it still added up to a very small party for a mission like this.
“What do we do if we meet someone unfriendly?” he asked the others, frowning.
“We’re expecting to be left alone, mostly,” Kusanagi replied. “The emblems of the Tower and the Diet Building are so well known for miles around that they’d have to be very brave and stupid to give us any trouble.”
“Then what if we meet someone stupid?” asked Doumeki. “Stupid and well armed.”
“Then I suppose they’ll find out why giving us trouble will be stupid,” said Yuuto. “We came well prepared for this, don’t you worry.”
“We will know well in advance if anyone approaches,” Arashi announced mysteriously. Yuuto and Kusanagi both looked at her questioningly and exchanged glances with one another, but she showed no inclination she intended to elaborate further.
“Well, if the young lady says so, I’m sure we can trust her,” said Kusanagi, uncertain but content enough. “An early warning certainly never does any harm.”
Ambiguous as it all was, Doumeki decided that trusting that they all knew what they were talking about wouldn’t be any problem. The Tower and the Diet Building had enough invested in the safety of their teams to have thought of anything Doumeki might concern himself with long before anyone was ready to set out.
***
And so the journey began.
The trip they took was, for the most part, long and dull. The pace they made was decent, but even if they kept it up there would be many days ahead of them. The wastelands didn’t afford them much to look at in the way of scenery, just endless, brown hills, sparsely covered with poison grasses, and maybe the odd knot of twisted trees here and there. There wasn’t much to do besides sit and watch the countryside go by, and only the five of them (and most of them strangers) for company. If tensions between the two groups had started off high going into all that boredom, things could have gotten very nasty indeed.
It was fortunate, then – and in retrospect, obviously prudent – that neither of the two great powers had selected anyone for the trip who harboured any of the great mutual resentment which the groups were known for. Beyond that, the two vehicles should have meant there was relatively little need for them to interact at all during the day, but that changed quickly when Yuzuriha and Kusanagi hit it off so well that they were talking like old friends before they broke camp on the second day. Even Inuki, who would tolerate Arashi in small doses but was inclined to snap at everyone else, took to him right away, and by mid way through that first evening, was quite content to stretch out on his back at Kusangi’s feet to invite the man to scratch his stomach. It quickly became obvious that the way to Yuzuriha’s heart was to make friends with her dog.
On the second day, Kusanagi had moved from his own vehicle to the Tower’s cart, where he and Yuzuriha spent the day in animated conversation. To balance up the loads, Doumeki added his weight to the other vehicle, taking Kusangi’s seat in the small cabin space. Although the controls made little sense to him personally, driving took little of Yuuto’s concentration, and he initially made a number of attempts at getting Doumeki talking on a variety of subjects. After a morning’s worth of Doumeki’s typically monosyllabic answers, however, he caught on to the fact his companion was not going to be much of a conversationalist, and was content to pass the rest of the day in silence, only occasionally glancing wistfully out the window towards the cart.
They varied the arrangement later on, when people began to feel like a change, so that Kusanagi moved back to his own vehicle with Yuzuriha, while the other three took the cart. Yuuto made another attempt at starting up a conversation with Arashi, but finding her no more talkative than Doumeki, he later took to squeezing back into the cabin of the Diet Building’s vehicle. There were only two seats inside, however, so this version required Yuzuriha to sit on Kusangi’s lap, which Arashi did not seem to much approve of. However, neither she nor Doumeki much minded being left in each other’s company. Both were quite content to pass most of the trip in contemplative silence, and there was a comfortable sense between them of a parallel history, despite their never having met before this trip.
It was only around the campfire in the evenings that the whole group found itself gathered in the same place at once. It was then that some of the more interesting topics of conversation which Doumeki would be privy to in the following weeks came up.
“Surely we have met before,” Yuuto said to Arashi during their meal on the third night. “There was that incident with the stray heard of deadlands beasts all those months ago which we were both present for.”
Arashi looked thoughtful for a moment before replying. “I remember. Though I do not recall seeing yourself there.”
“Only at a distance,” said Yuuto. “Not much of a proper introduction, but I thought I recognised you. I’ve a good memory for faces. You nearly sliced a young friend of mine open, as I recall.”
“Ah?” said Arashi vaguely, neither proud nor apologetic about the fact, regardless of its accuracy.
“Wait, when was that?” Yuzuriha piped up, from where she’d been engaged in some newly invented game with Inuki which had been bringing her in and out of the circle of firelight for the last few minutes. “Was I there?”
“That would have been… just at the beginning of the month before last, wouldn’t it?” said Kusanagi, setting aside a half-cleaned gun. “Ah… some sort of debate about animal ownership and boundaries? How did that get started again?”
“Hm… something about a group of our hunters following a herd too far into their territory?” Yuuto suggested. “Or was it the other way around?”
“No matter how we may try to claim them, the big herds will always stray,” observed Arashi. “Yuzuriha, you should remember – you and Inuki were involved that day too.”
“Of course, that was the one!” Yuzuriha exclaimed. “Kusanagi-san, you were there too?”
“Somewhere at the back of things,” said Kusanagi, “but I definitely didn’t see either you or Inuki anywhere.” At the sound of his name, Inuki gave a small whine and deposited his oversized head in Kusanagi’s lap in a meaningful way which indicated he expected a good scratch.
Yuzuriha turned back to her companion again. “Arashi, wasn’t that the day Sorata got that really bad bump on his head, and you…”
“It was,” Arashi cut her off smoothly before she could go on. There was a small cough from the other side of the fire.
“Sorata – that’s scruffy looking guy with the big grin? Er… that one may have been me,” Kusanagi admitted, with a guilty smile.
“He was fine,” Arashi said simply. “His head is hard enough to take far worse.”
Inuki gave another whine to indicate he didn’t feel he was getting nearly enough attention.
Despite being left out of the conversation, Doumeki listened with odd fascination. Serious conflict between two of the greatest powers in this side of the country was being made to sound a bit like a badly run sporting event.
***
The other time of day which sometimes left them all together for a while was noon, when Yuzuriha would always insist on letting her cart team stop for a rest. If it turned out that one of them had gotten something stuck in its foot, or if Kusanagi and Yuuto got caught up in another debate over whether they were using the compass correctly or whether someone had been holding the map upside down, departure could be delayed for quite some time, but at least there was no pressing need to rush. Being quite useless to everyone at these sort of points, and relatively confident of Arashi’s assurance they’d know if anyone else was approaching, Doumeki often used those opportunities to stretch his legs a bit while the sky was still light.
It was on one of those times that Arashi – despite being quite silent next to him on the cart all day – approached him for a talk.
At the time, Doumeki was simply standing, and staring out into the Deadlands that surrounded them on all sides. He heard footsteps as she came up behind him, though she did not speak at first. If she was wondering precisely what he was looking at, she did so in silence.
“Is it strange for you?” she inquired thoughtfully. “To be travelling with two groups who have been at war with each other for so long?”
Doumeki turned back to face her, thinking about the question. “You don’t act like you’re at war.”
A change in the breeze brought the sounds of the voices to them from where the vehicles were waiting; snippets of the men’s speech and Yuzuriha’s laughter. It sounded as though they wouldn’t have much longer to wait here today.
“I suppose we don’t, in this place,” said Arashi, turning to look back towards the others. “There’s no call for it.”
Doumeki followed her gaze. “The conflict between the Tower and the Diet Building,” he wondered aloud, “is it really everyone’s battle, or is it just Kamui and Fuuma who have the vendetta, and everyone else follows?”
There was another, even longer pause, while Arashi considered her answer.
“I think that even if both Kamui and Fuuma were to leave us, nothing else would change,” she said at last, twirling a strand of her hair around a finger. “But perhaps… this feud may even be good for all of us. This is not a peaceful world we live in. We can’t ever afford to forget that, even when times are good. To have such a close neighbour to remind us is something – perhaps – we should be thankful for.”
There was a level of truth to her words – the kind of truth that had existed unspoken for so long, that by the time Doumeki heard it for the first time spoken aloud, there was no surprise left.
“Maybe we should,” he agreed.
Other parts so far: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11
On a journey like this one, the biggest issue was inevitably going to be transport. Fuel was always in short supply, and they’d be traversing dangerous country. There’d be no opportunity to refuel along the way, and certainly no way to carry as much as they’d need for the whole journey.
The Tower’s solution was admirably low tech. The vehicle which they sent to Kurogane’s camp – designated the neutral start point for the journey – was best described as a refined version of an old-fashioned horse and cart arrangement. Pulling it was a team of deadlands beasts – a variety Doumeki had often seen in great herds in the wild. They were low built and long-necked, some strange mix of bird and mammal by appearance, barely domesticated, but tame enough in their handler’s care. It wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, but even with the loaded cart they could keep up a steady trop all day, and the only fuel they needed was the poison grass that covered the deadlands soil.
The handler who came with them was a young girl who cheerfully introduced herself to Doumeki and the Diet Building’s team as Nekoi Yuzuriha. Along with the cart team she was also accompanied by a tame deadlands wolf – larger than any breed that had existed back Before – which she called Inuki, and doted on with obvious affection. Doumeki had never met her before but had known her slightly be reputation nonetheless. Despite her age, she was known for having a way with the deadlands animals unsurpassed across the country.
Accompanying her was a rather more sombre young woman a few years her senior who introduced herself as Kishu Arashi. In contrast to Yuzuriha’s bubbly cheer, Arashi was quiet and serious, aloof in a manner that had little to do with ego and everything to do with heavy responsibility assumed without resentment from a young age. Doumeki never once saw her handle a visible weapon, yet she carried herself as if well armed at all times.
The vehicle sent by the Diet Building bore little resemblance to the Tower’s, being built something like a well-loaded tank. Information about just what fuelled or propelled it was never volunteered, and neither Doumeki nor the Tower team ever bothered to ask. At any rate, it kept pace with the cart without difficulty as the miles went past.
The team that came with it consisted of two men, both some years older than the girls the Tower had sent. One by the name of Kusanagi Shiyu appeared to have been selected to provide most of the muscle, for he arrived well armed and carried his gun with him with the familiarity of someone used to treating it like an extra limb. He was heavily built to go with it, but despite what should have made for a daunting appearance, he quickly turned out to be as open an amicable as anyone could have asked. His companion, Kigai Yuuto, was scarcely less friendly at face value, but he kept something more of a careful distance between himself and whoever he might have been engaging with. It was not difficult to surmise that if Kusanagi was to provide the muscle, Yuuto had been chosen to deal with negotiations; nor was it difficult for Doumeki to imagine this was the sort of man who would always listen and think twice as much as he spoke.
Altogether, even with Doumeki and everyone sent by both the larger groups, it still added up to a very small party for a mission like this.
“What do we do if we meet someone unfriendly?” he asked the others, frowning.
“We’re expecting to be left alone, mostly,” Kusanagi replied. “The emblems of the Tower and the Diet Building are so well known for miles around that they’d have to be very brave and stupid to give us any trouble.”
“Then what if we meet someone stupid?” asked Doumeki. “Stupid and well armed.”
“Then I suppose they’ll find out why giving us trouble will be stupid,” said Yuuto. “We came well prepared for this, don’t you worry.”
“We will know well in advance if anyone approaches,” Arashi announced mysteriously. Yuuto and Kusanagi both looked at her questioningly and exchanged glances with one another, but she showed no inclination she intended to elaborate further.
“Well, if the young lady says so, I’m sure we can trust her,” said Kusanagi, uncertain but content enough. “An early warning certainly never does any harm.”
Ambiguous as it all was, Doumeki decided that trusting that they all knew what they were talking about wouldn’t be any problem. The Tower and the Diet Building had enough invested in the safety of their teams to have thought of anything Doumeki might concern himself with long before anyone was ready to set out.
***
And so the journey began.
The trip they took was, for the most part, long and dull. The pace they made was decent, but even if they kept it up there would be many days ahead of them. The wastelands didn’t afford them much to look at in the way of scenery, just endless, brown hills, sparsely covered with poison grasses, and maybe the odd knot of twisted trees here and there. There wasn’t much to do besides sit and watch the countryside go by, and only the five of them (and most of them strangers) for company. If tensions between the two groups had started off high going into all that boredom, things could have gotten very nasty indeed.
It was fortunate, then – and in retrospect, obviously prudent – that neither of the two great powers had selected anyone for the trip who harboured any of the great mutual resentment which the groups were known for. Beyond that, the two vehicles should have meant there was relatively little need for them to interact at all during the day, but that changed quickly when Yuzuriha and Kusanagi hit it off so well that they were talking like old friends before they broke camp on the second day. Even Inuki, who would tolerate Arashi in small doses but was inclined to snap at everyone else, took to him right away, and by mid way through that first evening, was quite content to stretch out on his back at Kusangi’s feet to invite the man to scratch his stomach. It quickly became obvious that the way to Yuzuriha’s heart was to make friends with her dog.
On the second day, Kusanagi had moved from his own vehicle to the Tower’s cart, where he and Yuzuriha spent the day in animated conversation. To balance up the loads, Doumeki added his weight to the other vehicle, taking Kusangi’s seat in the small cabin space. Although the controls made little sense to him personally, driving took little of Yuuto’s concentration, and he initially made a number of attempts at getting Doumeki talking on a variety of subjects. After a morning’s worth of Doumeki’s typically monosyllabic answers, however, he caught on to the fact his companion was not going to be much of a conversationalist, and was content to pass the rest of the day in silence, only occasionally glancing wistfully out the window towards the cart.
They varied the arrangement later on, when people began to feel like a change, so that Kusanagi moved back to his own vehicle with Yuzuriha, while the other three took the cart. Yuuto made another attempt at starting up a conversation with Arashi, but finding her no more talkative than Doumeki, he later took to squeezing back into the cabin of the Diet Building’s vehicle. There were only two seats inside, however, so this version required Yuzuriha to sit on Kusangi’s lap, which Arashi did not seem to much approve of. However, neither she nor Doumeki much minded being left in each other’s company. Both were quite content to pass most of the trip in contemplative silence, and there was a comfortable sense between them of a parallel history, despite their never having met before this trip.
It was only around the campfire in the evenings that the whole group found itself gathered in the same place at once. It was then that some of the more interesting topics of conversation which Doumeki would be privy to in the following weeks came up.
“Surely we have met before,” Yuuto said to Arashi during their meal on the third night. “There was that incident with the stray heard of deadlands beasts all those months ago which we were both present for.”
Arashi looked thoughtful for a moment before replying. “I remember. Though I do not recall seeing yourself there.”
“Only at a distance,” said Yuuto. “Not much of a proper introduction, but I thought I recognised you. I’ve a good memory for faces. You nearly sliced a young friend of mine open, as I recall.”
“Ah?” said Arashi vaguely, neither proud nor apologetic about the fact, regardless of its accuracy.
“Wait, when was that?” Yuzuriha piped up, from where she’d been engaged in some newly invented game with Inuki which had been bringing her in and out of the circle of firelight for the last few minutes. “Was I there?”
“That would have been… just at the beginning of the month before last, wouldn’t it?” said Kusanagi, setting aside a half-cleaned gun. “Ah… some sort of debate about animal ownership and boundaries? How did that get started again?”
“Hm… something about a group of our hunters following a herd too far into their territory?” Yuuto suggested. “Or was it the other way around?”
“No matter how we may try to claim them, the big herds will always stray,” observed Arashi. “Yuzuriha, you should remember – you and Inuki were involved that day too.”
“Of course, that was the one!” Yuzuriha exclaimed. “Kusanagi-san, you were there too?”
“Somewhere at the back of things,” said Kusanagi, “but I definitely didn’t see either you or Inuki anywhere.” At the sound of his name, Inuki gave a small whine and deposited his oversized head in Kusanagi’s lap in a meaningful way which indicated he expected a good scratch.
Yuzuriha turned back to her companion again. “Arashi, wasn’t that the day Sorata got that really bad bump on his head, and you…”
“It was,” Arashi cut her off smoothly before she could go on. There was a small cough from the other side of the fire.
“Sorata – that’s scruffy looking guy with the big grin? Er… that one may have been me,” Kusanagi admitted, with a guilty smile.
“He was fine,” Arashi said simply. “His head is hard enough to take far worse.”
Inuki gave another whine to indicate he didn’t feel he was getting nearly enough attention.
Despite being left out of the conversation, Doumeki listened with odd fascination. Serious conflict between two of the greatest powers in this side of the country was being made to sound a bit like a badly run sporting event.
***
The other time of day which sometimes left them all together for a while was noon, when Yuzuriha would always insist on letting her cart team stop for a rest. If it turned out that one of them had gotten something stuck in its foot, or if Kusanagi and Yuuto got caught up in another debate over whether they were using the compass correctly or whether someone had been holding the map upside down, departure could be delayed for quite some time, but at least there was no pressing need to rush. Being quite useless to everyone at these sort of points, and relatively confident of Arashi’s assurance they’d know if anyone else was approaching, Doumeki often used those opportunities to stretch his legs a bit while the sky was still light.
It was on one of those times that Arashi – despite being quite silent next to him on the cart all day – approached him for a talk.
At the time, Doumeki was simply standing, and staring out into the Deadlands that surrounded them on all sides. He heard footsteps as she came up behind him, though she did not speak at first. If she was wondering precisely what he was looking at, she did so in silence.
“Is it strange for you?” she inquired thoughtfully. “To be travelling with two groups who have been at war with each other for so long?”
Doumeki turned back to face her, thinking about the question. “You don’t act like you’re at war.”
A change in the breeze brought the sounds of the voices to them from where the vehicles were waiting; snippets of the men’s speech and Yuzuriha’s laughter. It sounded as though they wouldn’t have much longer to wait here today.
“I suppose we don’t, in this place,” said Arashi, turning to look back towards the others. “There’s no call for it.”
Doumeki followed her gaze. “The conflict between the Tower and the Diet Building,” he wondered aloud, “is it really everyone’s battle, or is it just Kamui and Fuuma who have the vendetta, and everyone else follows?”
There was another, even longer pause, while Arashi considered her answer.
“I think that even if both Kamui and Fuuma were to leave us, nothing else would change,” she said at last, twirling a strand of her hair around a finger. “But perhaps… this feud may even be good for all of us. This is not a peaceful world we live in. We can’t ever afford to forget that, even when times are good. To have such a close neighbour to remind us is something – perhaps – we should be thankful for.”
There was a level of truth to her words – the kind of truth that had existed unspoken for so long, that by the time Doumeki heard it for the first time spoken aloud, there was no surprise left.
“Maybe we should,” he agreed.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 09:04 am (UTC)Ah well, I suppose it would be too much to ask for Kamui-Fuuma interaction that doesn't involve bloodshed. XD
As usual, Arashi is the level-headed one. ^_^ But wait, so the Tower people have livestock or something?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-23 12:57 pm (UTC)Ah well, I suppose it would be too much to ask for Kamui-Fuuma interaction that doesn't involve bloodshed. XD
And any Kamui-Fuuma interaction that *did* involve bloodshed would not be the sort of thing any of our main characters would want to be present for. They're the kind of characters who must have a hell of a story behind them, but it'd never fit into this one anywhere (even if I did know what it was). But at least I got to write for the both of them in this fic. ^_^
But wait, so the Tower people have livestock or something?
Not exactly, all the herds they're referring to are wild. It's only when one group goes hunting a bit too close to the other group's home territory that things get messy.